


Crossroads

by TeaRoses



Category: Haibane Renmei
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-13
Updated: 2010-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for yuri_challenge on LiveJournal, for the prompt:  She read it somewhere, she thinks -- out there on the other side of the wall, it was custom to bury suicides at crossroads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossroads

Rakka stands before the wall in the back room. She found the stick of charcoal in a store, and immediately bought it though she has never drawn, not that she can remember. It reminds her of Reki's hair.

Though she is not Kuramori, and has never really understood the talent that put Glie and beauty onto canvas, Rakka wants to draw Reki now. There are portraits already but she wants something of her own to remember her by, now that she has flown.

But she doesn't know where to start, doesn't know what comes next when she puts the charcoal to the wall. The hair should come first, she decides, and makes a long straight line. It just looks like a line though, not like Reki's hair after all. And it can't show how Reki's hair felt between her fingertips when she would put her head down and let Rakka stroke her hands through it gently.

Reki didn't like to be touched. She was afraid of taking too much for herself. Or maybe it was that she had already given so much of herself away. But she would let Rakka touch her, in the calm of the evening when they didn't have to think about anything, not even walls.

Finally she adds in a few more lines and now it's a little better. And though the white of the wall is nothing like skin, she remembers that too, Reki's skin when Rakka would gently stroke her face or her fingers.

Now she can feel the tears coming. Washi once told her not to cry for the Haibane who have gone on their Day of Flight. But Rakka wasn't certain if he was trying to tell her that he knew where they went and that it was a good place. Possibly even Washi wasn't certain of that, and he just wanted to give her an order.

She finishes drawing a face of sorts, stroking in eyes and eyebrows, and a gentle line for Reki's cheekbones. Rakka isn't really worried she will forget Reki's face. It was the first thing she saw when she was born. But she likes this, likes remembering her, whether or not it is truly proper for a Haibane to do so.

A few strokes make her shirt collar, which looks a little off-balance but will do, will remind Rakka of how that felt, that material under her fingers when she held Reki and asked her too many questions about the town and the wall and the nature of wings.

The rest of her clothing is easier to draw, some lines and folds and it looks almost right. Rakka remembers putting on her own first set of clothing, wondering who it belonged to before and whether anyone wanted their things to go to a Haibane. Reki had worn old clothing with a rebellious dignity. In fact, Rakka sometimes suspected that the shirt she remembers so well had somehow been bought new, for all that everyone in Glie has the rules of the place as their basic nature.

Rakka would never be like that, never as free as Reki, but maybe she doesn't need to be.

Now she has to stop and wipe her eyes, because she is remembering the night before Reki was gone. Haibane do not tell when they are leaving, but the both knew so clearly what was happening that it did not need to be spoken.

In the end Rakka had spoken it anyway, had acted like a little child, asking too many questions again. "Where are you going? Does it hurt? When I go will I see you?"

And Reki had only laughed, a laugh without bitterness, and told her to stay calm.

"I don't know where or why, you know that. But at least I'm going, and not staying to become nothing."

Rakka had kissed her then, a gentle slight kiss, which could surely be forgiven. And Reki not only forgave it but held her more closely.

"You're going to have take care of everyone when I'm gone, you know. Make sure to keep an eye on the children, and the Old Factory people, and Washi."

Rakka had laughed at that idea. "Washi doesn't need my help."

But Reki had only shook her head. "Do we even know?"

"Washi scares me."

"No, that's not true anymore. Watch over Washi too, in your own way, while you follow your orders."

She hesitates when she goes to draw the halo. Reki's halo was left cold on the ground, somewhere where even Rakka didn't dare to look. But she draws it, because she remembers the glow of the halo on Reki's hair.

The last question she had asked Reki was "Do you have any regrets?"

When she asked, she was certain Reki would answer that she regretted suicide, if even Reki dared to say it. Or that she wished she hadn't tried to climb the wall.

But she didn't say anything like that. She just drew a hand down Rakka's hair, and answered,

"I wish I had told you how I felt about you while there was still time. I wish I hadn't acted like you were just another Haibane I wanted to save."

Rakka wanted to cry, but she only kissed Reki instead, and lay her head down on Reki's shoulder.

"I knew it all along; I just felt I didn't deserve it," she said.

And they had slept curled around each other that night, knowing there would never be another. Rakka knew there was a time to pass over the wall, for Reki now and for her later, and she tried to be happy as she held her then, picturing a place for Reki that was bright and colored yellow. But this was a bittersweet ending, feeling Reki's gentle breathing and wishing there was just more time.

The wings are the last part, and Rakka hesitates again. Reki did not leave her wings behind, but does she need wings where she is? In the end she draws them, filling in the little feathers, the lines as thin as possible so the wings do not look black at all.

There is no answer to where Reki is or what she needs there. But as Rakka looks at the finished drawing, clumsy and amateurish but still Reki, she remembers something she read in an old book. It was a book probably should never have been allowed, as it spoke of places that were not Glie.

It said that some people in these other places buried suicides at a crossroads with no markings. The reason it gave was that the people thought the dead would become ghosts, and they wouldn't find their way back to town from there.

Rakka felt differently, she thought that perhaps it was because the people who buried them did not know where the souls of the suicides were going, to peace or to punishment. She realizes that now she knows, at least in the case of one. Reki went up, over a wall forever, on real wings.


End file.
